Setting its sights beyond the west after a successful US launch and the recent unveiling of its Facebook Open Graph integration, subscription music service Spotify has hired former Google executive Dan Brody as General Manager Asia-Pacific.
I’m hearing that Brody is currently in Australia talking to potential recruits, and Spotify itself has confirmed the GM position and that Brody is looking to hire people in Hong Kong, Singapore and Sydney.
Prior to Spotify, Brody was CEO at Koolanoo Group, Vice President of Business Development at Tudou, and a Strategic Partner of Development at Google China (and first employee apparently). He has lived in China for over 10 years.
Spotify is already available in the US, the UK, France, Spain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway and Finland but obviously has yet to set up shop anywhere in Asia — Spotify would not provide further details on a timeline for its Asian-Pacific launch.
This will be the fourth former high-level Googler hired by Spotify, the startup having recently picked up Teymour Farman-Farmaian for a business development role, Jeff Levick as head of ad sales and as of today Richard Gregory, who I’ve heard but not confirmed will be taking an executive position at Spotify US.
The Spotify team totals around 400 people and last time I checked in, it was looking to hire another 100 people to support its expansion plans. This number could only be increased by the success of the company’s Zynga-like social efforts — According to Inside Network’s App Data Spotify has gained 1 million new monthly active Facebook-integrated users since f8.
The one million new user number seems about right; An informal glance at my Facebook Ticker right now is telling me that a hell of a lot of you use Spotify.
Spotify has created a lightweight software application that allows instant listening to specific tracks or albums with virtually no buffering delay. It was launched in the fall of 2008 and had approximately 10 million users by September 2010. Spotify offers streaming music from major and independent record labels including Sony, EMI, Warner Music Group, and Universal. Users download Spotify and then log onto their service enabling the on-demand streaming of music. Music can be browsed by artist, album, record...
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